A Night Under the Bodhi Tree: The True Posture of Meditation

In a rare podcast, our host Amy Edelstein shares a personal experience of meditating at the site of the Buddha's awakening in Bodh Gaya back in 1985. 

In her inimitable narrative style, you'll feel the chill of a predawn rickshaw ride, the rustle of Bodhi leaves, and the mind challenge of conquering challenging mental states. 

Through Amy's experience, you'll settle into the posture of true meditation, open, curious, and willing to discover. 

If you’ve ever tried to “win” at practice, chased a perfect sit, or judged yourself by your mental mood, this personal account offers a reset rooted in classical texts, and supported  by lived experience. 

Listen, reflect, and then try it: loosen your grip and let the moment show you what the nature of consciousness is. 

Transcript

Introducing The Essay And Intent

Rethinking How We Approach Practice

Ehipassiko: Come And See

Journey To Bodh Gaya

The Attitude Of Open Handed Practice

Night Under The Mahabodhi

Insight, Serenity, And Afterglow

Blessing And Closing CTA

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Conscious Classroom, where we explore the future of education and what it means to create learning environments that truly support human flourishing. I'm your host, Amy Edelstein. In each episode, we'll look at how mindful awareness and systems thinking deepen learning and well-being, why inner strength and self-regulation are essential skills for young people navigating our fast-changing world. And how do we thoughtfully integrate synthetic intelligence without devaluing the heart of our humanity? For educators, leaders, and anyone shaping the future of human development, you'll find practical tools and big picture perspectives to increase your wonder and your impact. Let's get started. Hello, welcome to the conscious classroom. My name is Amy Edelstein. This is a special essay. It's called A Night Under the Bodhi Tree. And I wanted to share with you some of my early influences that are the foundation for what has become a large secular-based curriculum. So for those of you working in secular environments, please don't be put off by some of the quotes and the exploration. Take it as insight on the path to greater consciousness, insight on the path to real personal autonomy and greater compassion for our entire environment. This is a quote from the Anguara Nikaya, the Mahanama Sutta, translated by venerable Tanisaro Bhikkhu. Tanisaro Bhikkhu is an American who became a monk in the Thai forest tradition many years ago. The Dhamma is well expounded by the Blessed One, to be seen here and now, timeless, inviting verification, pertinent to be realized by the wise for themselves. A good question to start with, especially if you've been struggling with a meditation practice, is how are you approaching your meditation? Usually when we think about our meditation practice, we think about the experience during easy or hard, smooth or rough, challenging or blissful? Or we think about the after effects, how we felt, how long it lasted. Or we think about the long-term impact on how freely we feel as we move around our lives. Is meditation helping me be calm? Is it cultivating my patience? Am I less absorbed by the negative around me? Am I less reactive to the people I love? Take a moment and really ponder this question. How do you approach your meditation? What's the attitude? What's the background? What's the posture that we might not be quite admitting to ourselves? Are we rushed and squeezing it in? Are we insistent on a particular experience that we have to have? Are we clenched and determined to make it through without distractions, feeling like we're doing something that we really don't like doing but we know is good for us? Do we have our hands up crossed against our chest in a proverbial posture, shielding ourselves against our minds? Are we comparing ourselves to how we were in our best meditation session, our best meditation retreat? Are we comparing ourselves to someone sitting next to us or someone we admire? Are we wishing we were having a different experience? That experience that we think is the best kind. These are all pretty common thoughts that run through a meditator's mind. And it's good to see them, but it's more important to simply give them no attention. They just don't really matter. They're not that important. There is a quality that we should have on the path according to the Pali Canon, the early teachings of the Buddha that were compiled shortly after his death. And that quality is called a hippasiko. This quality of come and see for yourself. It's an invitation to anyone. It's accessible to everyone. But in fact, this quality is truly hard to practice. To really practice this come and see, a hipoxico, it means that we're not grasping after anything. We aren't approaching our experience already knowing what everything means and whether it's good or bad. We aren't judging and insisting. We aren't anticipating or rejecting our experience. And ever since I first heard it, forty years ago, I've never forgotten it. And that lovely word comes to mind, evoking a quality of softness and acceptance with a little bit of a command in it, a little bit of a demand to be awake and alert and attentive. When I did my first Vipassana Insight retreat in Budgaya in January of 1985 at the Thai Temple, I arrived by train, bus, and bicycle rickshaw. That last leg by Rickshaw from the Gaia train station started before dawn, started in the still of the night. The January air was chilled, and the wind tore right through my cyclist's cotton shawl and turquoise check doti. The petals squeaked each turn, and a gentle waving shroud of mist rippled over the dry riverbed to my left. A desert now, but during the Buddha's time it was once a thick tropical forest. The talkative Indian man in my train car on the day long journey from Delhi as the nine hundred and seventy five kilometers clicked off one by one, click clack, click clack, click clack, click clack. Each turn of the locomotive's wheels putting distance in space and time. Between its passengers, the modern city, racing towards a place that in many ways has changed little from twenty five hundred years ago. This Indian man had warned me of this deserted stretch of road. Beware the Dakoits, he admonished. The bandits come out of nowhere and they'll steal every last thing from you. And they even have knives. I hadn't thought much about it at the time. I hadn't learned yet, even after being in India for a couple of years, that when friendly train passengers cautioned me, they had my best interests in mind. They were also fulfilling their paternal duty, telling me what they would for their own long braided daughters. At that moment I was too preoccupied, wondering how I do in my twenty days of silence, rising before dawn and returning late at night, sitting and walking and sitting and walking as Siddhartha Gautama had done thousands of years before me. I spent many of those hours in the train checking my intention and motivation. I was egging myself on to be more sincere, to seek nothing less than full enlightenment, and to be determined not to move, not to flinch, not to be distracted. Periodically I'd let my right hand's fingertips drop to the padded train seat. As the earth is my witness, I'd think. That was the gesture the Buddha made as he sat under the Bodhi tree and vowed to himself and the universe that he would not move until he had penetrated the true nature of reality, and was free from illusion, delusion, greed, lust, sloth, laziness, enmity, anger. As each shrill round of the rickshaw petals cried out warnings like ravens in the dark, I shivered at shadows, looking around each denuded tree for dachoits. When my rickshaw walla stopped to smoke Obedian rest, I chanted mantras in my head to distract my mind, calm my nerves, and even appealed to the protection of the Devas, even though the tradition I was about to practice in raised an eyebrow at too much faith and superstition and too little scientific observation. Ehipasico, I thought to myself, come and see. Like a child looking at his mother's outstretched hand to carefully choose the ripest of fruits she held out to him, ehipasico is an attitude of curiosity, wonder, openness, and welcoming. That's what meditation is. Not a pressure to tie oneself up like a pretzel into shapes the knees, ankles, and all the rest of the limbs are reluctant to twist into. Not a test of wills of the mind, not a bashing of the ego to get it to comply like a docile and dull sheep. The fruits of meditation are as open as an upturned palm, nothing hidden, nothing secreted away. The meditator dropping expectation, belief, indoctrination and limitations approaches the open hand of our experience, curious, free from veils of fear or delusion. By the time we arrive safe and sound into the dusty center of Budgaya, just stretching into morning activity with the wood smoke from the three chai shops in the central square beginning to curl above the mud walled cooking stoves. Sleepy headed youngsters were splashing their faces at the village water tap and haphazardly rinsing glasses for morning chai. I thanked and paid my driver, ordered ginger chai and butter toast, and eventually made my way by foot back out of town to the Burmese Vihara, where I would wait a day or two until the ornate gold painted doors of the Thai Temple opened, and registration would begin by the barrack like Kutis where I'd stay for the duration of the retreat. Open handed, without expectation or judgment, curious and awake, alert and relaxed, unmoving and without tension, the posture of meditation. On retreat, one session led into the other. Breathing, walking, eating, my cushion became my refuge. The marigolds were so fragrant their scent colored me orange when I slow walked down the path. Lifting, moving, placing, alert, attentive, aware, open handed. After dinner on the night of the full moon, we walked in silence to the great Mahabodhi stupa, rising tall, shading the site where Siddhartha penetrated the last veils of ignorance, and became the one who is awake. We sat and walked through the damp chill of the night. Silent pilgrims sometimes came by with big tin kettles of sweet milk tea and throw away pottery cups. They'd leave a steamy chive by each meditator's seat and then move on their way. That night, as anticipation bled into nervous cold, then into blank dullness, then into frightened shadows, I sat inner and outer in an open handed posture. Come and see for yourself, the Bodhi leaves rustled and whispered. By the indeterminate light of dawn I was calm. Each night's watch had passed. A serenity had washed through me, cleansing as a cold morning bath. Those of us who'd stayed all night silently rose, moving without words as one out of the stupagrounds down the empty road, past the rice fields to the temple gates where the guard led us in. Like the bikoonis and bhikkhus of Nalanda, in procession, we joined the breakfast line for suji porridge, that steaming coarse yellow semolina mixed with buttery ghee, maple brown jaggery chipped off from fat cakes of dried cane juice, and a few fresh coconut chips and raisins in honor of the full moon. The rest of the retreat passed in an unbroken stream, open handed, curious, alert, insights to see and let slip through the fingers of an upturned palm. No striving, no compensating, no insistence, no distraction. Seamless with this fourth quality of the Dhamma Come and see a hipposico. Nothing occurred outside the posture of curious acceptance of what was occurring in the moment simply because it was occurring. Wisdom arising from unclouded seeing of the effervescent nature of thought and feeling, and the presence of unbroken awareness throughout it all. A hiposico, the posture of true meditation. Open handed. Come and see each one of us for ourselves. May your meditation bear fruit. May your contemplation bring contentment and joy. May your heart open with a care for those around us and the world we share. And may the fruits of our practice be dedicated to the benefit of all beings and to balance and harmony throughout the cosmos. Thanks so much. Thanks for joining me on the Conscious Classroom. If this resonated with you, please like, subscribe, and leave a review. It really helps other people like you find the show. And thank you so much for caring about the inner lives of young people and the future of education. I'm your host, Amy Edelstein, and I look forward to seeing you next time.